THE EASTERN PHILOSOPHER AND THE WESTERNIZED PROPHET

Gibran Khalil Gibran is one of the few Lebanese authors who has bridged the East and the West and is justifiably considered a citizen of the world. His book of highly estimated prose poems, The Prophet is one of the most widely read books of the 20th century. It reveals Gibran’s philosophy about different aspects of life, mainly the precept in the Gospel of Matthew about the importance of the human sense of mutuality which summarizes a Christian’s duty towards his/her neighbor and states a fundamental ethical principle. In addition to this golden rule, The Prophet reflects Gibran’s beliefs in Christianity. Being a true mirror of the Sufi mysticism of Islam, it also shows his idealistic opinion on pantheism. From this perspective, the research will focus on the combination of his beliefs in Christianity, Islam, and pantheism in The Prophet, as well as his firm conviction in creating the united and unique structure of a Christian-Muslim synthesis which he deeply adhered to.

Perspective Commentary: The Implementation of Welfare Policies Are Not Held to the Same Ethical Standards as Research: Raising Intergenerational Health Inequality Concerns

Over the last 12 years the United Kingdom (UK) has seen the introduction of an austerity programme—a fiscal policy—with the primary goal to reduce the government's budget deficit and the role of the welfare system. Between 2010 and 2015 there was an estimated reduction of £14.5 billion in spending, attributable to decreasing the value of benefits and restricting entitlement to benefit claimants. By 2020, there had been an estimated unprecedented £27 billion less spent on welfare compared with spending in 2010. Whilst fiscally-successful at reducing spending, some implemented welfare policies have had direct consequences for people's health, increasing inequalities which have been heavily criticized. Moreover, there is growing concern that this has an intergenerational effect. In this paper, we describe the ethical principles in human research, how these have been considered in public health policy, and the existing evidence of the direct and intergenerational health and welfare consequences of some recent, nationally-implemented welfare policies. We argue that ethical principles, specifically the ethical principle of safety that is applied in all research, should be applied to all public welfare policies to stop the rising inequalities in health we are seeing across generations. We highlight that initial changes implemented to welfare policies as a response to COVID-19 demonstrate that there can be a political and societal perceived value in going further to support individuals and their families during times of adversity, and consider the ethical implications of this.

The Golden Rule as a Paradigm for Fostering Prosocial Behavior With Virtual Reality

The Golden Rule of ethics in its negative form states that you should not do to others what you would not want others to do to you, and in its positive form states that you should do to others as you would want them to do to you. The Golden Rule is an ethical principle, but in virtual reality (VR), it can also be thought of as a paradigm for the promotion of prosocial behavior. This is because in VR, you can directly experience harm that you inflicted or were complicit in inflicting from the embodied perspective of the victim. This use of what we refer to as the Golden Rule Embodiment Paradigm (GREP) relies on participants in VR having the illusion of body ownership over a virtual body. In this article, we introduce virtual embodiment and the consequent illusion of ownership over the virtual body, and describe how this phenomenon has been utilized to influence implicit attitudes. We then introduce the GREP and give examples of studies in which it enhanced helping behavior.

Against Paretianism: A Wealth Creation Approach to Business Ethics

How should we distinguish between ethical and unethical ways of pursuing profit in a market? The market failures approach (MFA) to business ethics purports to provide an answer to this question. I argue that it fails to do so. The source of this failure is the MFA’s reliance on Pareto efficiency as a core ethical principle. Many ethically “preferred” tactics for seeking profit cannot be justified by appeal to Pareto efficiency. One important reason for this is that Pareto efficiency, as understood by the theory of welfare economics upon which the MFA relies, assumes a static conception of efficiency. This is a problem because many ethically “preferred” tactics can only be justified by appeal to dynamic efficiency considerations. I argue that, instead of Pareto efficiency, we should look to the value of wealth creation to understand the ethical constraints on how market actors may pursue profit.

The Covid-19 Pandemic and the Bioethics of Care

"The lecture illustrates how three fundamental dimensions of the human condition (vulnerability, interdependence, uncertainty), highlighted by the pandemic, are also at the root of the bioethics of care. In the first model proposed by Warren T. Reich, the bioethics of care is, in fact, based on Heidegger’s concept of Care and its link with vulnerability. It is proposed that two fundamental principles that remain implicit in the bioethics of care derive from this link: the principle of responsibility and the principle of solidarity. In the first part of the lecture, the theme-problem of preparedness is viewed in light of the principle of responsibility. Dwelling on Hans Jonas’s ideas on responsibility, I examine the duty of fore-seeing and its implications: the heuristics of fear, the difficulty of the shift from individual to collective responsibility, ultimately opposing the parental paradigm of responsibility proposed by Jonas with the paradigm of fraternity. In the second part, the relationship of interdependence between individual health and public health is examined, highlighting the marked inequalities that remain. Starting with some reflections on the principle of solidarity and its relationship with responsibility, the shift from the “fact” of interdependence to the ethical principle of solidarity is retraced, also through the rereading of an opinion issued by Italy’s National Bioethics Council (CNB) in 2020. This shift is seen in conclusion as both utopian and necessary if we are to re-interpret the pandemic emergency as a crisis that may result in a new beginning. "

Enter the metrics: critical theory and organizational operationalization of AI ethics

As artificial intelligence (AI) deployment is growing exponentially, questions have been raised whether the developed AI ethics discourse is apt to address the currently pressing questions in the field. Building on critical theory, this article aims to expand the scope of AI ethics by arguing that in addition to ethical principles and design, the organizational dimension (i.e. the background assumptions and values influencing design processes) plays a pivotal role in the operationalization of ethics in AI development and deployment contexts. Through the prism of critical theory, and the notions of underdetermination and technical code as developed by Feenberg in particular, the organizational dimension is related to two general challenges in operationalizing ethical principles in AI: (a) the challenge of ethical principles placing conflicting demands on an AI design that cannot be satisfied simultaneously, for which the term ‘inter-principle tension’ is coined, and (b) the challenge of translating an ethical principle to a technological form, constraint or demand, for which the term ‘intra-principle tension’ is coined. Rather than discussing principles, methods or metrics, the notion of technical code precipitates a discussion on the subsequent questions of value decisions, governance and procedural checks and balances. It is held that including and interrogating the organizational context in AI ethics approaches allows for a more in depth understanding of the current challenges concerning the formalization and implementation of ethical principles as well as of the ways in which these challenges could be met.

Ethical aspects of the Internet of Bodies

This article outlines bioethical issues related to the application of the Internet of Body (IoB) technology in health care so-called medical IoB devices. Manufacturers of medical IoB devices promise to provide significant health benefits, improved treatment outcomes and other benefits, but such IoB also carry serious risks to health and life, including the risks of hacking (cyberhacking), malfunctioning, receiving false positive measurements, breaching privacy, deliberate invasion of privacy. In addition, medical IoB products can directly cause physical harm to the human body. As human flesh is intertwined with hardware, software, and algorithms, the IoB will test our social values and ethics. In particular, IoB will challenge notions of human autonomy and self-government as they threaten to undermine the fundamental precondition of human autonomy. Thus, the protection of human autonomy should become the main ethical principle of the use of medical IoB devices.

Why Reproductive Justice Matters to Reproductive Ethics

This chapter addresses the historical and current attempts by physicians and legislators to regulate the reproduction of Black, Latina, and Indigenous women, with a particular focus on Black women. It connects the contemporary language promoting long-acting reversible contraception for “risky” populations to past policies coercing Black, Latina, and Indigenous women to use contraception and undergo sterilization. At the same time, these efforts to regulate the reproduction of women of color coincide with a rising number of abortion restrictions and lack of access to abortion and safe motherhood, which affect women of color disproportionately. Black women bear a disproportionate burden of the staggering and rising maternal mortality rate in the United States. These topics are often omitted from discussions about reproductive ethics, and social justice is often neglected as a major ethical principle. Approaching the reproductive freedom of women of color from a reproductive justice perspective, therefore, offers an important way to expand our understanding of reproductive ethics.

Inequitable access to healthcare in Africa: reconceptualising the “accountability for reasonableness framework” to reflect indigenous principles

Background The “Accountability for Reasonableness” (A4R) framework has been widely adopted in working towards equity in health for sub-Saharan Africa (SAA). Its suitability for equitable health policy in Africa hinges, at least in part, on its considerable successes in the United States and it being among the most comprehensive ethical approaches in addressing inequitable access to healthcare. Yet, the conceptual match is yet to be examined between A4R and communal responsibility as a common fundamental ethic in SAA. Methodology A4R and its applications toward health equity in sub-Saharan Africa were conceptually examined by considering the WHO’s “3-by-5” and the REACT projects for their accounting for the communal responsibility ethic in pursuit of health equity. Results Some of the challenges that these projects encountered may be ascribed to an incongruity between the underpinning ethical principle of A4R and the communitarian ethical principle dominant in sub-Saharan Africa. These are respectively the fair equality of opportunity principle derived from John Rawls’ theory, and the African communal responsibility principle. Conclusion A health equity framework informed by the African communal responsibility principle should enhance suitability for SAA contexts, generating impetus from within Africa alongside the affordances of A4R.